Bush Lies on NIE - Quoth Democrats: Crickets

Pelosi was asked what was most important about regaining majority status. "Subpoena power," she said.

Those of us who work in national Democratic Party politics know that we have total fucking stiffs heading up the House and Senate intelligence committees. This is self-evident in the wake of something head-slappingly insane like this Iran NIE release.

It's totally obvious now that Cheney's apocalyptic drive for World War III impelled cooler heads across the river to throw Bush overboard. Did the Dems toss him an anchor? Of course not. Did they try to inject themselves into the narrative at all, even?

No, they're proving themselves just as out of the loop as Bush is.

Can anyone fathom how little public credibility or impact Chairmen Rep. Silvestre Reyes and Sen. Jay Rockefeller have?! If one had the blind faith of a thousand Obamas, enough to move mountains, one might foolishly hope that these guys are doing things beneath the radar that we're not aware of. But based on the past 48 hours (and indeed the past several months of administration lies on Iran), it sure seems like not.

As Spencer Ackerman notes, rather than getting ahead of this news -- let alone creating it by pushing for the release of an Iran NIE that's months old -- Rockefeller said he had nothing to do with the release, and Reyes, even worse, wants to be "fully informed about the classified sources upon which this estimate is based" and that he will "review areas where certain agencies dissent."

This comes from a horrendous official statement that manages to be both hawkish and befuddled. Sounds like a dude who has no idea what the hell is going on. I know that the Dems on the House committee are pretty good members overall, but there's nobody with any kind of profile, with the possible exceptions of Holt and Patrick Murphy. Still there is no attempt to get one of these guys in the news cycle on this!

The Senate is even worse. The most recent press release on the committee homepage is from October 18 (on, kill me, FISA). Nothing on Rockefeller's homepage (where there's one press release posted for all of November). It's not like there aren't good progressives on the committee (Feingold, Whitehouse, Wyden), but none of them have built a media-ready profile on these issues.

When the media has go-to guys for Democratic Party intelligence matters who know what they're talking about, and who know how to tell a story about our perspective, then we won't constantly be playing catch-up. Until then, we're pathetic.

Intel chairs can see these reports. It's been talked about for months that this Iran NIE was circulating and being fought over. How did Reyes or Rockefeller not get a copy of the damn thing months ago and scream (unclassified) bloody murder? Rather than the Iran NIE being an issue where Dems are leading on the Hill, it's an issue of "good" Republicans against "bad" Republicans within the administration.

Knowing our binary media, that narrative with a Dem perspective is even too complicated - factions within parties? Whoa, that's like, so insider baseball, for these idiots.  The Democratic perspective is completely left out of the story.

Guys, when Bush claims the world is flat, it's not enough to let the facts speak for themselves - Dems must force the morning headline to read: "Bush Claims Earth Flat, Democrats and Vast Majority of Population Demand Psychological Tests and Resignation."

Otherwise, as Paul Krugman said, the headline will read: "Opinions Differ on Shape of Earth."

So as a result, "the story", if you can call it that, is as The Rude Pundit called it in his live commentary during the White House press conference:

Whoa, methinks he just stormed off. Angry that the reporters would dare think he's not been working to make sure their families are not nuked by non-existent Iranian weapons. Don't we get it? He's right. Everyone else in the world and in half of his administration and Congress is wrong. And if we can't see his innate rightness, then we can all go fuck ourselves. Now, someone tell the Rude Pundit why anyone anywhere should trust this man?

My advice for if we didn't have total fucking stiffs heading up the House and Senate intelligence committees?
If we didn't have total fucking stiffs heading up the House and Senate intelligence committees, I'd put together for the media an understanding that, on one hand, the intel verifying that Iran STILL DIDN'T have a nuclear weapons program came from intercepts in July -- and that senior Bush officials were briefed on them.

BUT, and on the other hand, Stephen Hadley told us yesterday that Bush has only known this information for "a few months"--August at the earliest.  And Bush said he only found out on monday!

Intelligence oversight committees ought to be asking whether Bush was informed of the July intercepts that refuted everything he said publicly- all his fear-mongering and sabre rattling. And if not, why not? Why was the Commander-in-Chief kept out of the loop? And by whom? 

It just reeks of some of the stove piping Cheney pulled with the Iraq war, down to the dismissal of any counter-evidence as one ruse to fool American intelligence.

Jello Jay Rockefeller's SSCI is supposed to be doing a report on the difference between what Bush officials had been told--and what they were telling America. But that report pertains to Iraq, not Iran.

First, replace our chairmen, then we need to be getting committee members like Whitehouse and Wyden and Holt and Murphy out in front -- and even interested in -- this kind of thing so we can play offense instead of "me too." Overall leadership should be pushing the narrative harder; intel members should be making themselves a powerful force, which they haven't done.

Where to push the narrative? If the leadership wanted to really impress me, abandon the 'what did the President know and when did he know it' construct and cut to the chase: "when did Cheney know and why didn't he make sure Bush knew"? Because it's clear that Bush was not *told* to stop talking.  He wasn’t given orders to shut up about it. My guess is that Cheney purposely didn't tell/ordered Bush to keep talking in his hawk voice, and kept Bush just in the dark enough to keep him from being a liar.

If it's proven that Bush wasn't lying because he was kept in the dark about the counter-intel, fine, this episode will serve as a clear and unequivocal indicator that Bush is Puppet Boy. Even his own National Security Advisor says Bush is a puppet.

That's how you toss an anchor to a drowning man.